Thirty Years Ago
GOOD WOMAN STILL LOOKING, the Saturday after this appears, I’ll be in the science exhibit next to the Space Theater, same time. I wear a turquoise windbreaker with white trim. Ask for Mike. Still Looking.

LOVELY. I’M into trach, Spittoons, Rust. Greasy hands, foot odors & I never tie my shoe laces. Hear an aesthetic mongrel as he seeks eternal wisdom. Hurdy Gurdy.
— CLASSIFIEDS, February 1, 1979

Twenty-Five Years Ago
Martin Montoya, who owns My Rich Uncle’s in East San Diego: “The hot spots change because there’s a certain clique that almost creates them,” says Montoya, whose club held the top position in 1978 when it was an after-hours discotheque. “And if you get that core of about 300 people — the flashy, loud dressers in their midtwenties to their midthirties who go out to clubs at least three or four nights a week — the rest of the people generally follow.”

In 1978 it was My Rich Uncle’s; the following year it was Carlos ’n’ Charlie’s in La Jolla; in 1980 it was the Mustang Club in the Midway area and the Spirit in Bay Park; in 1981 it was the Bacchanal in Clairemont; in 1982 it was Dos Amigos in Mission Bay and the Rodeo in La Jolla; and last year it was Club Diego’s.
— CITY LIGHTS: “I’VE GOT A GOOD MIND TO OPEN UP A CLUB AND BEAT YOU OVER THE HEAD WITH IT,” Thomas K. Arnold, February 2, 1984

Twenty Years Ago
She heard the baby crying for what must have been the eighth time in four hours. Karen Warren (not her real name) likes to sleep in on Sunday mornings; that particular Sunday, the howling of her neighbor’s newborn cut through the walls without diminishing.

The mother started screaming, “Shut up! Shut uuuup!” The baby took this as a cue to cry louder. The baby wailed on, and the mother kept screaming, “Shut up!”

Karen heard a muffled thump. The baby stopped crying.
— CITY LIGHTS: “SOCIAL UNIT,” Mary Lang, February 2, 1989

Fifteen Years Ago
Our namesake lies due west of Corpus Christi, past flat miles of sorghum, wheat, and cotton fields and towns with shops smelling of blood that for pennies per pound will butcher the deer you shot and mount its head. Farther west the land becomes inexhaustible in breadth and texture. “If it’s got thorns on it, then we got it in South Texas” is what they say down here.
— “SAN DIEGO, TEXAS,” Abe Opincar, January 27, 1994

Ten Years Ago
In the waning weeks before my expulsion from Yale became final I’d invite these dullards up to my room and put on some sides. Though I had everything by the Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Byrds, Love, most of the Kinks, the first Doors — it was the spring, by now, before the SUMMER OF LOVE — all they would sit for was “I Feel Like Homemade Shit,” on The Fugs First Album (ESP 1018).
— “VINYL RECKONING,” Richard Meltzer, January 28, 1999

Five Years Ago
This is how out of control the Super Bowl has become. This year, America Online and CBS.com have teamed up (think Jeffrey Dahmer and Donald Trump) and invited people with way too much time on their hands to log on to CBS.com and vote for their favorite Super Bowl commercial.

According to people in the pay of the above forementioned scum, there have been 2200 television commercials since 1967, the year of our first Super Bowl. Out of that total, nameless persons picked ten commercials representing Apple Computer, Budweiser, Coke, Levi’s, McDonald’s, Mountain Dew, Noxzema, Pepsi, Tabasco, and Xerox. On Saturday night — yes, this Saturday night — CBS will televise Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials.
— SPORTING BOX: “HOUSTON, WE HAVE MONEY,” Patrick Daugherty, January 29, 2004